Post navigation

We finished my parents’ living room yesterday, just in time before they got back from Paris. It was like an episode of Extreme Makeover Home Edition, we were done about an hour or so before they arrived! We even had to blow dry the plaster in the ceiling to be able to sand and paint it before they got here. Anyway, now that we’ve done the whole house except for the entry way and staircase area (which we won’t be doing til after Christmas) I’m here to share the process.

First of all, you should know that there are different types of popcorn walls (or ceilings). Some of them are easy to get rid of with a big spatula if you get them really really wet. In my parents’ house this wasn’t the case, and since the texture wasn’t too pronounced, we decided to smooth the walls on top of the texture. Cover the texture, if you will. Whatever type of popcorn walls or ceilings you have, you’re going to have to smooth and sand and smooth and sand anyway, so we simply skipped the first step of removing it first (again, skipping this step might not work for you if you have a lot of texture and/or it’s easy to remove).

So, that said, another disclaimer: it’s going to take a lot of work. And I mean a lot. It took us a full month to do three bedrooms and the living room, and Andoni isn’t working right now, so he was practically here all day. I can’t imagine working full time and then coming here in the late afternoon/evening to do this. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s definitely going to take a long time, especially if you’re living there at the same time. Plus, be aware that everything is going to be a mess. The walls have to be sanded down several times and that creates a huge amount of dust, which gets everywhere.

Now that I’ve scared you enough, let’s continue with the tutorial.

1. If there’s any furniture in the room, take out as much stuff as you can and move the rest towards the middle. Cover everything in paper or plastic – be aware that anything you leave uncovered will get very very dusty. (The picture below is before we covered everything).

2. Protect the trim work and all the floors. Again, anything you miss will get dirty and dusty.

3. For the first coat, we used strong bond filler, which was like a gritty powder plaster. You’ll have to mix it with water in the proportions indicated in the bag. Since you’re going to use very large quantities for this, you’ll probably want to invest in an electric mixer. It’s a drill attachment that costs less than $10 and it looks like an immersion blender. You’ll save a lot of time and energy with this. Once the mixture is ready – be sure to let it rest for a few minutes after mixing, otherwise you might find yourself with bubbles on the wall – use a big spatula to apply it to the walls. The first coat needs to be a bit thick, enough to barely cover the texture if you haven’t removed it. Don’t worry too much about the coat being perfectly smooth. See how there’s too much plaster in some areas? Those are lines that appear right where the spatula ends because of the pressure.

4. Once the first coat is done you need to let it dry. Since it probably took you a full day, let it dry overnight. The next morning, with a clean spatula in one hand and a medium grit sandpaper block in the other, use the spatula to remove the bigger bits of excess plaster – especially around the trim work – and the sandpaper to sand down the walls. It’s difficult to show in pictures/video but the texture of this first coat won’t be very smooth.

5. It’s now time for the second coat. Before you apply it, remove all the sand dust from the trim work so that it doesn’t get in the way. We used a thinner filler for this one, called powder filler. As soon as it starts drying you’ll notice that it’s much less gritty than the first one. Again, like the first coat, mix it with the amount of water stated in the package using the electric mixer, let it rest for a few minutes, and apply a full second coat using a big spatula. This coat is harder to apply because it needs to be smoother than the other one, so be careful, you want it to be as smooth as possible.

6. Now is also a good time to take care of all the corners. The best way to do this is with your finger. Don’t worry if it’s not too smooth, you’ll use the spatula to remove the excess and sand later on.

7. When the second coat is dry (you’ll probably want to wait overnight) use the spatula + sand block method again, only this time you should use a high grit sand block, to get smoother walls. Remove sand dust from trim work.

8. You’re almost done! Since you probably still have a few imperfections on the walls, you’ll want to add a thin coat (using the powder filler, like in the second coat) to those areas only. So unlike the first and second coats, where you coated the whole walls, this third one is only applied to the areas that still need a bit of work. Then use the spatula + sand block one last time.

9. The walls should now be smooth, and you are now ready for paint! Just make sure to remove all the sand dust from the trim work before you start cutting in and rolling away.

All in all, it took us at the very least five days per room from start to finish, sometimes more. Day one was prep work; covering everything up, protecting it, etc. Day two was for the first coat. Day three we sanded the first coat and applied the second. Day four we sanded the second coat, gave the third (partial) coat, and since it dried very quickly, sanded it down and applied the first coat of paint. Day five we applied the second coat of paint, waited for it to dry, and moved the furniture back into place.

So, I hope that gives you a good picture of the method, but since a few things are hard to explain and understand from photographs, here’s a video for you.

And now, a few before and after pics. It’s hard to photograph, but I did my best.

A couple of close-ups of the textured walls…

And after, smoothed down and painted:

Like I said, it’s a long process but it’s definitely doable, especially if you can get time off work and you have enough help. Also, having an empty house helps. And the results are definitely worth it.

I hope this helped anyone out there who’s considering doing this! Popcorn walls were definitely popular here 15-20 years ago so a lot of houses have them. Thankfully ceilings are usually smooth, because doing this to ceilings would be worse than walls.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention that we painted in four different colors – two blues, and two greens. You can sort of see that the first blue (the living room) is, well, bluer than the second one (that one is my brother’s bedroom and it’s more grayish). Then the office and my parents’ bedroom is a lighter, grayish green and their closet area adjacent to the master bedroom is a darker, deeper green, although it didn’t photograph well at all.
They plan on painting the entryway & stairway area (which is really one “room”) gray to tie in both the blues and the greens.

Yeah it was a lot of work… Andoni did most of it and my brother, cousins and I helped when we could. Thankfully we’re taking a break before we do the entryway & staircase, because it’s been a crazy month.

Yes, they asked us to do it because it’s very very expensive to hire it out. Plus they’re living there while we reno (except for a few days last week that they were traveling) and I don’t think many pros would be willing to do this type of a job while they’re living there ant everything’s furnished.
Oh and I also forgot to mention that when you sand, dust gets everywhere, and that also means on yourself!! So we were definitely a mess (sanding was one of the things I usually helped out with and my work clothes are now completely white).

That is so impressive! Way to go on finishing such a huge project! Oh, and it looks 1,000,000 times better!

We’ve been considering doing this to our hall, but only half way down the wall. The other half we’d like to DIY wainscot. Every square inch of wall and ceiling in the Little House is textured. And I mean every. square. inch. It was apparently really big in Dallas at one time because every other house we looked at when we were house hunting had textured walls as well!

It was very popular here as well, only houses that are less than 10-15 years old have smooth walls. Thankfully ceilings have always been smooth. If you can work up the strength for the project I definitely recommend doing it! The results are worth it. The hall sounds like a good place to start because I’m guessing it’s one of the smallest “rooms”.

Ah, I totally need to study this post in closer detail and then get to doing this. I love many things about our little house, but if there is one thing I absolutely loathe it’s the textured walls. And what’s so frustrating, is that apparently the old owners just put that texture up right before selling the house (and they covered up the hardwood floors and put in a horrible carpet, but that’s another story!), how stupid!

Anyway, to get rid of that texture is something we’ve been meaning to do, but there’s always been other things to do first, plus it just seems like such a BIG job, and we would need to do every single room except the kitchen. So, phew! But this is the first time I’ve actually seen somebody do this, so it’s giving me a new new-found inspiration and determination!

Btw, just found your blog so I’m looking forward to a little relaxed browsing! It seems like you have a ton of fun stuff to look through!

I’m happy you found me! Let me know if you have any doubts regarding the smoothing down walls project. It’s definitely a heck of a job but the results are really worth it (I agree with you, textured walls would drive me crazy). It’s nuts that the old owners put the texture up right before selling, wow!
If you were to carry out this project I’d definitely do it one room at a time. That’s what we did (mainly because my parents & brother were/are living there so it was the only way) but it was also nice because we got some sense of accomplishment every week as we called each room “done”.

Wow. This looks fantastic. What a transformation! Your rooms look so much modern without the popcorn. It’s one thing about our house that I’ve always hated. Ours is on the ceiling and they are seriously getting the stinkeye right now! Filing this away for a rainy day and pinning NOW :p

Thanks Caroline! It was a complete pain (ugh we spent a full month plus another week for the landing+stairs+entry at my parents’… seriously we were there every morning and left at dinner time. At least we ate well, lol) but well worth it.

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.

Hello!

My name is Ainhoa and the one next to me is my husband Andoni. We moved in together in October of 2009 when we bought our apartment in Urduliz, a small town in the north of Spain, and got married in September 2012. A Little Bite of Everything is a blog about all my hobbies; although I'm the one who writes here, all the projects & recipes I share are done between the two of us. You can get a hold of me by e-mail: ainhoa (dot) vega (at) gmail.com. Want to know more? Sure!

Advertise with us

So you're interested in advertising with A Little Bite of Everything? Great! We're currently offering inexpensive ad slots to big and small home-related businesses.
Here's some stats about the site: currently, A Little Bite of Everything receives approximately 38,000 visits monthly and 90,000 pageviews. The average reader is from the U.S., female, between 25 and 35; although we have many readers from Spain, UK and Australia as well.
If A Little Bite of Everything seems like a good fit for your business, e-mail me at ainhoa (dot) vega (at) gmail (dot) com to get you started on $10 monthly ads. I'll be happy to talk!